7th INTERNATIONAL AND 43rd ANNUAL ELTAI CONFERENCE

The English Classroom – Experiments and Experiences

Strategies for Success in Language Learning:

Collaborative and Peer Teaching

COLLABORATIVE READING AND GROUP THINK-ALOUD:

ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPING AUTONOMY IN READING

Dr. KSHEMA JOSE Assistant Professor

The English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabadkshemajose@yahoo.com

Key Idea and Keywords• Identify features of a Strategy Training

Programme that can facilitate acquisition of new strategies and develop autonomy in reading comprehension

• Collaborative learning, Group think aloud, Autonomous reading, Introspective interviews, Retrospective interviews, Metacognitive awareness, Comprehension monitoring

Lifelong Learning

Autonomy in Language Learning • Control one’s process of learning • Motivation• Makes learning focused and purposeful • More effective learning • Transfer autonomous behaviour to other areas

of social behaviour

Autonomous Readers

• Use of Reading Strategies to access any text type• Modify reading strategies according to reading

purpose• Employ reader-specific reading strategies • Comprehend without external support

(Oxford, 1990)

Strategy Training Programmes (STP)

Awareness of strategies leads to independent and effective learning - Wenden and Rubin (1987), O’Malley and Chamot (1990) However, awareness raising is an essential but not sufficient requirement for developing independent reading habits.We need to equip learners with alternative strategies to solve his comprehension problems. Make reader aware of a wide variety of strategies, so that he can choose, adapt, modify, adopt, or even create a new one to fit his learning style.

Designing a STP

• Learners should have basic decoding skills • Explicit instruction through reflective dialogue • Opportunities for guided practice• Opportunities for Independent practice • Feedback • Promote socio-constructivist learning • Allow learners to choose strategies that

appeal to them

Objectives of the Study

(i) Identify the reading strategies used by the subjects and determine if an awareness of reading strategies would lead to better comprehension

(ii) Decide if group activities like collaborative reading and social think alouds can expose learners to strategies used by peers, and if they could be encouraged to make use of these

(iii) Analyse teacher roles and learner roles in collaborative reading and social think-aloud activities.

Details of Study

• Subjects: Twenty, male, adult, ESL learners, 19 to 31 years, low to intermediate reading proficiency

• Duration: 20 days • Texts: Nine - 3 intermediate and 6 advanced • Tools to access strategies: TOL, metacognitive

response sheet, retrospective and introspective interviews

• Tools to assess comprehension: free recalls, and factual, local, global and inferential comprehension questions

Details of Data Collection Sl no.

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4

1. texts used 1A: text 11B: texts 2,3,4 and text 1

texts 5 and 6 texts 7 and 8 texts 9 and 1

2. classroom activities

1A: reading tasks, SILL1B: TOL, retrospective, introspective interviews and reading tasks

group discussion of strategies, collaborative reading, social TOL, peer teaching of strategies, inter group discussion of responses

collaborative reading, individual performance of tasks, discussion of responses

individual reading, individual performance of tasks, reports of strategies used, responses to SILL

3. Purpose/Rationale

1A: entry level 1B: to identify strategies used

aware of alternative strategies available

if exposure to alternative strategies result in better comprehension

if there is increase in strategy repertoire, if this increase has led to improvement in comprehension

Findings

Post intervention improvements observed:

• Better Free recall: able to locate main and supporting details of the text

• Increased understanding of word/ phrase meanings • Increased performance in inference-based questions • Better understanding of anaphoric and cataphoric

referents• New reading strategies added to strategy repertoire

Relevant TOL excerpts

• One person, my friend said me it is good to read first one paragraph and last one paragraph, then I am know what is very very important in this lesson. This is correct…

• Many things am not understanding when I started Spoken English classes in CIEFL. I am reading and reading with no understanding and now I am also thinking and making pictures. Then I always know what is talking about in next paragraphs also.

• First am reading to get the all-meaning of the paragraph. Then I look for important points just to underline them.

• We can see capital letters and all… then one should read with good attention.

Strategies Most Adopted

• Self-monitoring • Skipping paragraphs or sentences and reading

ahead • Guess word meaning through context • Guess word meaning by breaking it up into

familiar parts • Translation and substitution • Translation and elimination

Relevant TOL excerpts

• I am by hearting many important points, I am writing down them and looking at them when I read below paragraphs.

• It is good to make questions in a text, then only reading is very much easy for a student… he can always point, like look for answers.

• …you understand by understanding the before sentence and after sentence. Then you also understand a one or two new words…

• I cannot follow this sentence, then this one sentence I translate.• I read and read a sentence with one word I am not understanding, is

translated to Telugu by me. The full sentence is made into Telugu but the difficult word is put as a dash. Then the same word in my mother tongue, I check all the word and the correct word is used by me also in English.

Comprehension ScoresPre and Post Intervention

Texts 2, 3, and 4(max score: 12)

Texts 7, 8, and 9(max score: 12)

R1 4.5 11.5R2 3.5 12R3 7.5 11R4 7 6.5

R5 10 8.5R6 4.5 12R7 4 8.5R8 5.5 10.5Mean 5.8 = 6

10

Learner Changes Observed

• Enhanced metacognition• Making use of repair strategies • Using new reading strategies• Improvement in task performance• Gained confidence to read independently

Features of an Effective STP

• Explicit teacher think-aloud model of effective reading comprehension strategy use to raise awareness of reading comprehension strategy use.

• Provide explicit peer think-aloud model of effective reading comprehension strategy use to provide exposure to alternate reading strategies used by peers.

• Provide sufficient social/ collaborative reading opportunities to discuss and demonstrate use of strategies.

• Provide individual opportunities to practice use of new strategies acquired in social contexts.

Learner Roles

• Focus shift from teacher and materials to learners • Cooperative learning – active information

processing and cross-modelling, economical • Type 1: proficient users – benefit from

homogeneous groups• Type 2: less proficient users – benefit from

heterogeneous groups• Type 3: least proficient users – require individual

attention, intensive training, teacher support

Teacher Roles

Explicit interventionist approach

• Identify effective strategies • State purposes of each strategy • Monitor group learning by helping learners discuss with and

demonstrate to their peers the strategies they use • Provide appropriate tasks for strategy practice • Facilitate transfer of strategies from one text to another by

assisting learners to explicitly link metacognitive knowledge about the individual learning process with strategies that are expected to enhance learning

•

THANK YOU

kshemajose@yahoo.com